Toyota announced the establishment of a new company, Toyota Research Institute, as an R&D enterprise focusing on artificial intelligence and robotics. The Japanese company believes artificial intelligence will play a crucial role in future industrial and automotive technologies and will eventually spawn an entire new industry. With the first semi-autonomous vehicles already here, they do have a point. The headquarters of TRI will be located near Stanford University in Silicon Valley in Palo Alto, California, with a second facility near MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Operations will begin in January 2016 with Toyota making an initial investment of $1 billion over the next five years to establish and staff the two initial locations with approximately 200 employees. In addition to this, Toyota will invest $50 million over the next five years…